THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

IMHO, Sandro Magister has significantly raised the bar of his opposition to many actions and statements by the reigning pope by now calling the Catholic Church today, as it is under Bergoglio,
'a church with no leader', though this appears only in the title to his latest blogpost. I do not think he didn't intend it to convey something - because no one doubts Jorge Bergoglio was elected
to lead the Catholic Church five years ago.

But is he leading the Catholic Church as a pope ought to lead? He obviously is not, by the most basic criteria to judge a pope - he has certainly not been a symbol of unity for the Church, but the
opposite, being the main agent of divisiveness today; and he has certainly not been transmitting the deposit of faith intact and inviolate as handed down to him by his predecessors, but rampaging
through it as he pleases.

Bergoglio is obviously leading something else - what I have called from the start, for convenience and simplicity, 'the church of Bergoglio', an ambitious, poisonous flea merrily and opportunistically
riding on the back of the now-hapless elephant that is the Roman Catholic Church, in order to make its way in the world. Because heading the ultimate 'one world religion' is just a side concern for
him. He also means to be the supreme world leader, thanks to his co-option of and by the United Nations and its many agencies that share - and are in a position to advance - his secular priorities.
He is a pope who has abdicated his spiritual mission in favor of a secular agenda that was never the priority of the Church instituted by Jesus Christ. What does it say of Bergoglio that he thinks
he can establish a 'utopia' on earth - free of poverty and hunger by 2030 - when Jesus himself tried nothing of the sort, not even for the people of what was then Palestine, a minor province of the
Roman Empire? He said over and over that his kingdom is not of this earth, "the poor you will always have with you", and in that Sermon on the Mount, which Bergoglio seems to think
consisted only of "Blessed are the poor" (he pointedly and consistently omits the rest of the phrase, i.e., "...in spirit"), Jesus says twice: "So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’
or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God]
and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides." (In the Bible, 'righteousness' means 'moral conduct in conformity with God’s will'.)

But to get back to Magister and his latest blogpost:

In a church with no leader,
2 new protests from bishops and the faithful

April 7, 2018

An anxious and disquieting Eastertide, for those at the top of ‘the Church’ [such as it is under Bergoglio]. In the span of a few days, two of the most revolutionary turning points in this pontificate have been contested by public declarations from cardinals, bishops and the faithful – two watershed developments that would now admit to Eucharistic communion remarried divorced Catholics living in adultery as well as Protestants.

[The most appalling aspect to these twin liberalizations under Bergoglio is that they complete overturn basic Catholic doctrine about receiving the Eucharist, by allowing it for remarried divorces who choose to continue living in adultery and are therefore in a chronic state of mortal sin, and Protestants who do not believe in the Trans-Substantiation and for whom the Communion wafer is nothing but a mark of social belonging, if you will, to a church community.

But how has it come to this?That blaspheming the most supreme of the Church’s sacraments is allowed in the name of ‘mercy’ to those who are, by definition and for very solid reasons, excluded from the sacrament? But that is how unconscionable the decisions of the pontificate have been. When the primary criterion driving its feckless and shameless trashing of the deposit of faith has been to demonstrate Bergoglian mercy which is a travesty of divine mercy because it has neither truth nor justice, nor indeed, authentic charity at all for souls who deserve proper rigorous spiritual care from their pastors, not indulgence for their sins.]

But now two of those cardinals, the German Walter Brandmüller and the American Raymond L. Burke, have again come forward and together with all the participants in a conference held in Rome today, Saturday April 7, have published a DECLARATIO, a profession of faith, which reaffirms the key points of Church doctrine brought into doubt by the onslaught of innovation begun by the current pontificate.

The text of the Declaratio was released in multiple languages at the end of the Rome conference last night. Following is the English text:

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‘Therefore, we testify and confess…’
Final declaration of the conference "Catholic Church, where are you going?"
Rome, April 7, 2018

Due to contradictory interpretations of the Apostolic Exhortation ‘Amoris laetitia’, growing discontent and confusion are spreading among the faithful throughout the world.

The urgent request for a clarification submitted to the Holy Father by approximately one million faithful, more than 250 scholars and several cardinals, has received no response.

Amidst the grave danger to the faith and unity of the Church that has arisen, we, baptized and confirmed members of the People of God, are called to reaffirm our Catholic faith.

The Second Vatican Council authorizes us and encourages us to do so, stating in Lumen Gentium, n. 33: "Thus every layman, in virtue of the very gifts bestowed upon him, is at the same time a witness and a living instrument of the mission of the Church itself 'according to the measure of Christ's bestowal' (Eph. 4:7)."

Blessed John Henry Newman also encourages us to do so. In his prophetic essay "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" (1859), he spoke of the importance of the laity bearing witness to the faith.

Therefore, in accordance with the authentic tradition of the Church, we testify and confess that:
1) A ratified and consummated marriage between two baptized persons can be dissolved only by death.
2) Therefore, Christians united by a valid marriage who join themselves to another person while their spouse is still alive commit the grave sin of adultery.
3) We are convinced that there exist absolute moral commandments which oblige always and without exception.
4) We are also convinced that no subjective judgment of conscience can make an intrinsically evil act good and licit.
5) We are convinced that judgment about the possibility of administering sacramental absolution is not based on the imputability of the sin committed, but on the penitent’s intention to abandon a way of life that is contrary to the divine commandments.
6) We are convinced that persons who are divorced and civilly remarried, and who are unwilling to live in continence, are living in a situation that is objectively contrary to the law of God, and therefore cannot receive Eucharistic Communion.

Our Lord Jesus Christ says: "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn 8: 31-32).

With this confidence we confess our faith before the supreme pastor and teacher of the Church and before the bishops, and we ask them to confirm us in the faith.

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As for communion for Protestants at Catholic Masses, seven bishops of Germany, including the cardinal of Cologne, Rainer Maria Voelki, have made an appeal to the Holy See against the decision to made by the German episcopal conference to allow it.

This decision, presented in the form of an “orientational aid”, went into effect on March 22 at the end of a meeting of the episcopal conference, where it had been approved by a majority vote after a lively discussion.

The bishops who contested this decision maintain that it touches on a question that is too significant, one that endangers the doctrine and unity of the Catholic Church, to be left to the judgment of individual national Churches or individual bishops or priests. And precisely for this reason they have made an appeal to Rome, asking for a clarification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Prefect Luis Ladaria, and the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, under Cardinal Kurt Koch.

The initiative of the seven bishops was covered in the April 4 edition of the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The seven signers of the appeal, in addition to Cardinal Woelki, are Ludwig Schick, archbishop of Bamberg, Konrad Zdarsa, bishop of Augsburg, Gregor Maria Hanke, bishop of Eichstätt, Stefan Oster, bishop of Passau, Rudolf Voderholzer, bishop of Regensburg, and Wolfgang Ipolt, bishop of Görlitz.

Whether the Holy See will respond or not, and how, will naturally depend on the pope. Who, when he was questioned once by a Protestant woman who asked him if she could receive communion at Mass together with her Catholic husband, answered with a whirligig of yes, no, I don’t know, you figure it out – and in this manner, opened the way to a great variety of decisions, all of which he has depicted as possible. As Cardinal Walter Kasper afterward confirmed, confidently attributing to the pope the idea that “if two spouses, one Catholic and one Protestant, share the same Eucharistic faith and are inwardly disposed, they can decide in their conscience to receive communion”.

But if a response comes from Rome on this question, it will appear even less justifiable that the pope has kept such a stubborn silence concerning the DUBIA on the other crucial question of communion for the divorced and remarried, this too concerning the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, “source and summit” of the Church’s life.

Getting back to the Declaratio published by the participants in the conference in Rome on April 7, it must be noted that this is not formulated as a request for clarification - although it incorporates some of the questions raised in the DUBIA - but as a testimony of faith coming from the People of God at a moment perceived as being of “grave danger to the faith and unity of the Church,” because of “contradictory interpretations” of AL [what I consider the concrete lethal form of the poison at the heart of this anti-Catholic Pontificate.]

It is no coincidence that the conference was entitled “Catholic Church, where are you going?” And its subtitle was this statement from Cardinal Carlo Caffarra: “Only a blind man can deny that in the Church there is great confusion.”

The speakers were cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, and, from Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Zekiun, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the philosopher and former president of the Italian senate Marcello Pera, the canonist Valerio Gigliotti, the bioethicist Renzo Puccetti. There was a replay of a talk given by Cardinal Caffarra in defense of the encyclical of Paul VI “Humanae Vitae,” now under reconsideration. And Cardinal Burke also raised his critical voice in an extensive interview published just before the conference on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and in English on LifeSite News.

But perhaps the most original element of the conference, developed by Cardinal Brandmüller and incorporated in the Declaratio,”was the reference to a text by Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) on the key role of the faithful in bearing witness to the true doctrine of the Church: “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.”

Newman published this text anonymously in the English Catholic magazine The Rambler, of which he had been the editor. At the time it raised heated controversy. It was republished in 1961 just before Vatican Council II and since then has become a classic.

In it Newman reviews the moments of the Church’s history in which the orthodoxy of the faith was lost by many of the bishops and saved instead by many of the ordinary baptized. And he gathers from this that on matters of doctrine listening to the voice of the faithful - not to be confused with public opinion, but to be verified in its fidelity to the tradition of the Church - is not only desirable, but a duty.

A lesson of history more valid now than ever, and one to which the Declaratio gives voice. In the hope that it may be heeded even by him who sits on the chair of Peter.

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Before I forget, here's one of the articles I bookmarked a few days ago to post ASAP, but I have not gotten round to doing it:
https://onepeterfive.com/cardinal-schonborn-a-council-could-approve-of-female-ordinations/
It shows, alas, how the president (I think he still is, unfortunately) of the Foundation established by the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis to pursue its activities has since become more Bergoglian than Bergoglio. Given the heterodox doctrinal and pastoral positions Schoenborn advocates today, it is appalling to think that this is the person who was the chairman of the editorial committee that drafted the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Yet, perhaps even now, behind the scenes, Schoenborn has already been hard at work with other Bergoglians to effect the many revisions in the Catechism that Bergoglio desires. Schoenborn may yet have the historic distinction of being the only man to head the drafting commitee of the Catechism for two churches - the Roman Catholic Church and the church of Bergoglio.

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‘Amoris Laetitia’ vs. ‘Veritatis Splendor’:
The Bergoglian 'revolution' that threatens
the moral foundation of the Church
by E. Christian Brugger

April 7, 2018

I greatly agree with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago when he says the reasoning in Pope Francis’s two-year-old document on marriage and family Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) is “nothing short of revolutionary.” But that’s where our agreements cease.

For to him, this revolution is a boon for the Church. To me, it poses a threat to the foundations of the Church’s belief.

In particular, it threatens our Catholic understanding of morality. Pope St. John Paul II addressed the perennial Catholic understanding in Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). And he warned against moral theories regnant at the time that led to a rejection of conclusions that the Church held to be definitive.

In particular, he noted four errors of these theories:
1. Consequentialist reasoning: He said they use “circumstances and the situation … (as) the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule” and so “permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law” (56).

2. Flawed notion of conscience: He said they wrongfully set in opposition “the precept(s) [of the moral law], which [are] valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil” (56).

3. The idea that moral absolutes are merely ideals: He said that they propose the “very serious error” that “the Church’s [moral] teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal,’ which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man” (103).

4. Setting the pastoral against the doctrinal: And he said that in the name of “so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions,” they propose what is “contrary to the teaching of the magisterium” and “justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept” (56).

In the last two years since AL was released, Catholics around the world have been distressed to see that the model of moral reasoning in AL - called by some advocates [fanatic Bergoglians] as the “new paradigm” [and even Bergopglianism's 'core Gospel'] — embodies these same four errors.

1. Consequentialist reasoning: The “new paradigm” proposes that on the basis of the “immense variety of concrete situations” or, as the Argentinian bishops call them, “complex circumstances,” some Catholics cannot be expected to conform their behavior to the general rule prohibiting engaging in sexual behavior with anyone other than one’s valid spouse; and so proponents support exceptions to the “general rule”; and in these cases, the people are free to receive the Holy Eucharist without changing their sexual behavior.

2. Flawed notion of conscience: Amoris Laetitia states, consistent with Catholic moral tradition, that conscience helps me to judge when an action of mine “does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel”; but then it goes on to teach, contrary to Catholic tradition, that conscience must also “recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God,” that is to say, conscience recognizes that I am not able to keep the Gospel’s objective demands here and now; and through this process, it says, we “come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits.”

In other words, conscience condemns my action by judging rightly that it is contrary to the Gospel; and then it acquits me from my obligation to live by the Gospel by judging that I am too weak to carry out the Gospel’s command and even allegedly hears God telling me that this is the case.

3. Moral absolutes are merely ideals: Amoris Laetitia constantly refers to the objective and absolute demands of the Gospel for sex and marriage as merely an “ideal” or a “rule,” and it says that God knows not everyone can be expected to conform their lives “fully [to] the objective ideal.” It stigmatizes an obedience-centered approach to living the Gospel as “cold bureaucratic morality,” “nothing more than the defense of a dry and lifeless doctrine,” but calls its own approach a “message of love and tenderness.”

4. Pastoral solutions contra doctrine: Amoris Laetitia refers to its proposals for living the Christian life as “new pastoral methods,” referring to them by various names such as “a process of accompaniment,” “evangelical discernment” and “gradualness in pastoral care” (See Familiaris Consortio, 34).

It teaches that what’s most needed is a kind of “pastoral discernment” that recognizes that the “concrete situation” sometimes does not permit conformity to the “rule … without [causing] further sin” and says that when such a situation arises, the individuals are, in fact, called by God to set the “rule” (i.e., “the overall demands of the Gospel”) aside. And yet Amoris Laetitia confusingly insists that these new pastoral methods “can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity, as proposed by the Church.”

When Amoris Laetitia first appeared, there was doubt as to whether its pastoral plan conformed to Veritatis Splendor and Catholic Tradition. Its hermeneutic of ambiguity left open a variety of possible interpretations, not all of which were problematic.

But then, in September 2016, the Argentine bishops formally interpreted Amoris Laetitia Chapter 8 as saying that some divorcees who are civilly remarried were free to return to Holy Communion without a commitment to refrain from sexual relations:
“When a declaration of nullity could not be obtained [by civilly remarried divorcees], the aforementioned option [i.e., for the couple “to live in continence”] may not in fact be feasible. However, a path of discernment is likewise possible. If it is recognized that, in a concrete case, there are limitations that mitigate responsibility and guilt, particularly when a person considers that he would fall into a further fault, harming the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist.”

On the same day of the publication of the text, Pope Francis privately wrote to the Argentine bishops, saying:“I received the writing of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region, ‘Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia.’ Thank you very much for sending it to me. And I congratulate you for the work you have done: a true example of accompaniment of priests. … The writing is very good and makes fully explicit the meaning of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations, and I am sure that it will do much good.”

When the Pope’s private letter was questioned, rather than saying it held no authoritative status for Catholics, the Pope formally elevated both his private letter and the Argentine bishops’ guidelines to the status of an apostolic letter, formally publishing them both in the October 2016 edition of the official Acts of the Apostolic See with the intent of making them part of his “authentic magisterium.”

By this last act, the Pope officially approved a practice that contradicts the practice of the Catholic Church dating from apostolic times: Prescribing that Catholics who divorce and “remarry” while their first spouse still lives cannot be admitted to Holy Communion because, as living in sexually active relationships with persons other than their presumptively valid spouses, their condition of life objectively contravenes the sixth precept of the Decalogue and thus contradicts the loving union between Jesus and his Church, which is signified by and made present in the Holy Eucharist.

This teaching has been reaffirmed clearly and authoritatively multiple times in the last 40 years:
1. In 1980, by John Paul II: “[They] are unable to be admitted [to Holy Communion] from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and his Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.”
2. In 1981, by the same: “The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.”
3. In 1994, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF): “They find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists.”
4. In 1997, by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists” (1650).
5. In 1998, by the CDF: “Under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful, and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception.”
6. And in 2007, by Pope Benedict XVI: “not admitting the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist.”

In addition, when questions have been raised about whether the private judgments of remarried divorcees are sufficient to establish invalidity in their own cases and whether the so-called “internal forum” could be used to resolve questions of the status of their first marriages, both were answered firmly in the negative.

And yet the “process of accompaniment” outlined in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia seems to make both a part of its ordinary pastoral plan.

The disparities between the teaching of Amoris Laetitia and Veritatis Splendor and Catholic moral tradition are causing confusion to the faithful. This needs to be addressed by the bishops and the Pope as soon as possible.

That's a rather lame end to this essay. Some bishops already are addressing it, but clearly, not enough of them - even as the pope persistently refuses to make any definitive clarification on any part of AL, and he never will, because if he 'clarified' anything in the sense of how he obviously wants it, then he would be putting his own neck into the noose of material heresy. His continuing silence to all the appeals for clarification is the Bergoglian version of invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

Insisting on getting any answers from him, one way or the other, is a futile exercise and always was. He is not stupid - he will never self-incriminate himself. Nor will he give any answer that would in any way admit any error in AL, because that would undermine all the groundwork already laid down by his legion of minions.

So let all the concerned cardinals, bishops and laymen focus their attention on fighting the immoral teachings of AL on the parish level, to begin with; and step up the anti-AL campaign by faith-based reason at all levels, from the Internet to parish handouts and somehow to the schools and seminaries. It's a David-and-Goliath situation to work against a reigning pope, but David won because he had the Lord at his side. There is no reason to think he is on Bergoglio's side in this case.